Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson Book

Despite some secondary inaccuracies, Paul Finkelman's dissection of constitutional sociology is fascinating on many counts. If we are to keep to the "original intent" of the US Constitution, as so many conservatives insist, then slavery should still be legal. That it is not shows that the Constitution was never meant to be engraved in stone by divine fingers of fire, but a document that changes with the needs of those whom it serves. The "original intent" school, is, however, right in one thing: the document was designed as a political compromise between the ideals of liberty and common humanity, and the very real injustices and inequities of the social system to which it was applied. It is to protect these inherited inequities that the "original intenders" wrap them in constitutional law. Mr. Finkelman demonstrates here that they are - unfortunately - on solid historic ground for doing so.

In his take on Thomas Jefferson we see personified the theoretical contradictions poured into the foundations: how can a man so radical for liberty be a slaveholder? Jefferson was a man of his class and time, a white oligarch who stopped democracy at the door the minute it grew intrusive; and now all too easy to vilify. Yet this paradox is not so strange, and is in fact with us still. How could President Obama, for instance, speak of change while featherbedding Wall Street? Ending a disastrous Iraq War by continuing its "surge?" The ideal has always given way to the practical and expedient. The hypocrisy may be worthy of censure but only with great caution, for it lies in everyone at all times.